Letter shows Hitler’s evil intent - even in 1919
FRANKFURT: In 1919, a superior officer, impressed with a soldier’s oratorical skills, asked him to commit his virulently anti-Semitic diatribes to paper. Out of that came the first written record of Adolf Hitler’s obsessive hostility towards Jews, an embryonic form of the world view that would lead to the Holocaust and millions of deaths.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles has acquired what may be the original document, known as the Gemlich Letter. Next month, the centre plans to put it on public view for the first time, at its Museum of Tolerance, making the letter the centrepiece of its Holocaust exhibit.
The text of the letter is well known to scholars. It is considered significant because it demonstrates just how early in his career Hitler was formulating his anti-Semitic views.